Pylos

Pylos, also known as Navarino, is a town in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. It became a large city during the Mycenaean era, and it was Nestor's kingdom at the Trojan War, during which it had a population of 50,000 people. After the end of the Second Messenian War in 668 BC, the Spartans conquered Pylos, forcing the Pylians to flee to Sicily. By the time of the Peloponnesian War, the city and most of the surrounding countryside were unpopulated, and the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC. It later regenerated in size under the Byzantines, and it fell to the Crusaders in 1204, following the Fourth Crusade. In 1417, the Republic of Venice seized the fortress of Pylos, and the Ottomans seized it in 1500 and recaptured it from the Venetians in 1501. From 1685 to 1715, Pylos was a part of the Venetian Morea region, but it was reconquered by the Ottomans during the Morean War. In 1828, Pylos became a part of an independent Greece, and it came to have a population of 5,287 people in 2011.